Apple Is Developing a TV Show Based On Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series (deadline.com) 142
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deadline: In a competitive situation, Apple has nabbed a TV series adaptation of Foundation, the seminal Isaac Asimov science fiction novel trilogy. The project, from Skydance Television, has been put in development for straight-to-series consideration. Deadline revealed last June that Skydance had made a deal with the Asimov estate and that David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman were cracking the code on a sprawling series based on the books that informed Star Wars and many other sci-fi films and TV series. Goyer and Friedman will be executive producers and showrunners. Skydance's David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross also will executive produce.
Originally published as a short story series in Astounding Magazine in 1942, Asimov's Foundation is the complex saga of humans scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, all living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. The protagonist is a psycho-historian who has an ability to read the future and foresees the empire's imminent collapse. He sets out to save the knowledge of mankind from being wiped out. Even the Game of Thrones' creative team would marvel at the number of empires that rise and fall in Foundation. Asimov's trilogy has been tried numerous times as a feature film at Fox, Warner Bros (with Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, who greenlit The Lord of the Rings), and then at Sony with Independence Day director Roland Emmerich. Many top sci-fi writers have done scripts and found it daunting to constrict the sprawling saga to a feature film format. Most recently, HBO tried developing a series with Interstellar co-writer and Westworld exec producer Jonathan Nolan, but a script was never ordered.
Originally published as a short story series in Astounding Magazine in 1942, Asimov's Foundation is the complex saga of humans scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, all living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. The protagonist is a psycho-historian who has an ability to read the future and foresees the empire's imminent collapse. He sets out to save the knowledge of mankind from being wiped out. Even the Game of Thrones' creative team would marvel at the number of empires that rise and fall in Foundation. Asimov's trilogy has been tried numerous times as a feature film at Fox, Warner Bros (with Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, who greenlit The Lord of the Rings), and then at Sony with Independence Day director Roland Emmerich. Many top sci-fi writers have done scripts and found it daunting to constrict the sprawling saga to a feature film format. Most recently, HBO tried developing a series with Interstellar co-writer and Westworld exec producer Jonathan Nolan, but a script was never ordered.
It's Apple (Score:1)
So, while it sounds interesting, I'm not interested.
* walled garden is interchangeable with prison camp
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Re:It's Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
This will only inconvenience their paying customers, not the pirates.
(as with all DRM)
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i should have replied to the parent here woops
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Track down the radio play, that was in a BBC walled garden, not so much any more and pretty darn good radio play.
Hmm, I wonder if high performing aspergers with savant qualities can play the second foundation psychohistory game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. The right idea, at the right time, generating a mass action change and hardly anyone the wiser.
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Track down the radio play, that was in a BBC walled garden, not so much any more and pretty darn good radio play.
If you had of just wrote "I've got no idea about the BBC" it would have been faster.
The BBC are under obligation to release their content. In fact they try to release it as far and as wide as possible (international sales are revenue for a cash strapped BBC). The reason you cant find a lot of older BBC material is that they used to re-use tape and other storage resources to save money so the recordings simply don't exist any more. This is why it's hard to find old BBC radio plays and early BBC TV series,
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Which of course is unlikely, since recording equipment was rare and expensive back then.
Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:5, Insightful)
I finished reading the trilogy a week or so ago. There is no feasible way to take what was five hundred or so years of conflict and intrigue, and all the attendant characters, and make it into a two-hour movie. Nor even a three-hour movie.
Whatever would come out would be a shell of the story, the characters lifeless, and the plot unable to be followed by the majority of viewers. A tv show is the only way to approach Asimov's story since it allows for longer development of plot lines and encompass the time involved.
Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:5, Insightful)
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How about shifting close to the current era, rather than latter on, you know with the vehicle for psychohistory game play being the internet. I could imagine the game looking something like controlling this https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] by tapping the right hoop and the right time.
The current era on, would likely be more interesting, add in jumping forward an era with each season and new cast, with knew story line. How many seasons defines how far forward they go and whether or not they make it to coll
Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:4, Insightful)
The robots where usually the best characters.
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Here here!
Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:5, Interesting)
Having read the novels some years ago, the only part of it that seems like it would make much sense as a movie was the part where The Mule messes up psychohistory. And without all the backstory it just wouldn't be as strong a story.
All I can say is if they do make this into a series I hope they take their time casting The Mule. He was actually one of my favorite characters of the books for some reason I've never been able to identify.
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He is terrific as Khruschev in The Death of Stalin which is an amazing movie. It is a black comedy, but it is also - ironically - one of the most accurate historical movies I have seen. Satire does not get in the way of truthfulness.
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All I can say is if they do make this into a series I hope they take their time casting The Mule. He was actually one of my favorite characters of the books for some reason I've never been able to identify.
Likely because he's the only character that actually has any...character to him? I mean, it's been about a decade since I read them, so grain of salt added, but I seem to recall none of the characters really having depth outside of The Mule. Everyone else felt like a cross between a red shirt and any one of the 12 dwarves in The Hobbit that weren't the king. I can't remember any of their names (I'm bad with names though) and couldn't tell you any characteristics of them other than the men in Foundation o
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Back when the stories were written, that was true in Real Life, too. It's not an important plot point, and I doubt that anybody would care if it were left out.
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It does bring up a problem I had with the books. The ability to predict the big picture of the future seemed off to me. The Mule definitely put that in prespective. However there are many Mules in history, or as people say it these days, Black Swans
For instance, if the new world had not had tobacco, it would have greatly changed the history of many countries. This accelerated the colonization of the new world. Similarly, a small change in negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles could have prevented W
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...Similarly, a small change in negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles could have prevented WWII, which changed the entire world....
If someone had told Franz Ferdinand's driver the new route to take after leaving City Hall in Sarajevo, instead driving back down the same street where the rest of assassins were still hanging out, then WWI could have been avoided.
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More likely delayed a bit until another excuse showed itself. At the time, some of the great powers, in particular Germany, were just itching to go to war and just needed the excuse and with the treaties in effect at the time, any conflict was going to expand.
Re: Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:2)
There are two groups of psycho historians. The secret inner circle ensures that history does as itâ(TM)s told.
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The ability to predict the big picture of the future seemed off to me.
Suspend your disbelief, you will enjoy the tale more.
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Oh come on!
Hari Seldon is a very well defined character.
Great characters abound: Yugo Amaryl, Raych, Dors Venabili, even Demerzel/Daneel. You could even infer a couple emperors' character traits from the scenes they appear in.
That alone for the first book.
Admittedly, the interim period up until the Mule is a bit bleak, however Bel Riose is a good character worth expanding a bit, and moving on to the latter books, I liked the Golan Trevize/Janov Pelorat/Bliss trio, a LOT. They go through quite a few adventur
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The psychohistorians of the Second Foundation kept improving the plan, and kept things going. Then the Mule showed up, and screwed things up royally. The book Second Foundation was mostly about how they compensated for that.
Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:5, Funny)
" A tv show is the only way to approach Asimov's story"
Indeed. And every year will finish with the line:
"It doesn't matter, because I know, where the Second Foundation REALLY is!"
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Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why I liked the Altered Carbon series on Netflix better than most movie adaptations, in spite of some changes. The world and plot was slightly different than the novel, but it did the story justice in a way a 2-3 hour film could not.
A longer series could have avoided the heavy-handed exposition of the virtual/stack technology. And allow more time for the characters to shine, which is usually possible with the depth available from the novel.
With on-demand streaming becoming more popular, I hope to see more novels adapted in this fashion.
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Altered Carbon was a pretty good adaptation, but they really toned it down a lot for TV and in doing so Kovacs was a much less interesting character. I really liked the contrast between his more human side and when he flips the Envoy switch in the books, but that was mostly lost on TV.
Still, overall it was quite good. Hopefully we get the sequels too.
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It's almost a reboot rather than a straight adaptation. It did keep me engaged throughout even though I read the books, once I realized it was a different story.
The change to Quellcrist and the Envoys will have effects down the line if they continue the series. Apparently Morgan was involved with the production, so I'd hope there's a good plan to address that in the future.
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I am sorry you've grown into a small, angry person. It is a pitiable existence, and I have some sympathy, but only you can make it better.
Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours (Score:5, Insightful)
I finished reading the trilogy a week or so ago. There is no feasible way to take what was five hundred or so years of conflict and intrigue, and all the attendant characters, and make it into a two-hour movie. Nor even a three-hour movie.
now that you've read those, can i also recommend the books that were written by authors under the direction of the Asimov Estate? Roger Allen McBride, and Greg Bear. "I, Caliban" and "Foundation and Chaos". also, can i recommend "The End of Eternity", you will see why when you read them. also, "The Robots of Dawn" (paying special attention to Giskard - http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/R... [wikia.com] - who later featured indirectly in "Robots and Empire")
the primary reason is this: i see it again and again, stupid stupid politicians and even high-profile people like elon musk being total idiots, recommending that the "Three Laws be put into Law" or "Sent Into Space". anyone who TRULY UNDERSTANDS the Three Laws knows that they are DEEPLY FLAWED.
Asimov spent a LIFETIME EXPLAINING WHY.
it boils down to the fact that the robots were incapable - literally - of permitting humans to take risk. they had no imagination and no free will (a facet explored in the "I, Caliban" series with the "New Law" robots, which *did* have some modicum of free will).
Giskard was the first Robot with a Zeroth Law, "Thou shalt not allow HUMANITY through action or inaction to come to harm". He "imprinted" that - and his telepathic ability - onto R Daneel, who over the next thirty THOUSAND years became the hidden background character that (as described in "The End of Eternity") caused Earth to become mildy radioactive, forcing humans into space, where, unfortunately, due to the Robots, they populated 50 worlds.... and stopped.
The Foundation Series then jumps forward thirty thousand years, to cover an epic fight for human survival, where it is only AFTER Asimov died and other authors were permitted to "fill in the gaps" (Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear) do we find out what was really going on.
So, when you say "would not fit into a four hour film".... I would be genuinely extremely surprised if the full depth and breadth of Asimov's work would be able to fit into anything less than a 200-series show of an hour each.
I am.. blown away that people believe that the three laws are a good idea. completely astounded.
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But never forget, one of the solutions to the inadequacies of the Three Laws is to limit the use of robots. Keep them out of situations where the Laws would cause more problems than solved, or don't design any that would be placed in those positions.
Which does solve a problem...
Merits of the Three Laws of Robotics (Score:4, Insightful)
I am.. blown away that people believe that the three laws are a good idea. completely astounded.
I think you are overstating things a bit here.
The Three Laws are a convenient shorthand for saying "a comprehensive set of safeguards governing the operation of a robot." In the web comic Freefall people simply talk of "safeguards" rather than some arbitrary three laws.
The Three Laws have a huge place in the history of SF because they represent a sea change in how robots were presented. According to Asimov himself, in forwards to collections of his robot stories, before Asimov formulated the Three Laws robots were presented as dangerous things that generally went out of control to drive a story. He reasoned that people try to make things safe, and robots would be no different; people would incorporate safeguards, and his Three Laws were his take on a minimal set of safeguards.
Asimov then spent the rest of his career gleefully finding corner cases where the Three Laws were inadequate, and writing stories about what happens when those corner cases are hit. He was the first to promulgate the Three Laws idea and also the first to poke holes in them.
If someone really is arguing that the Three Laws are perfect and ready to implement, that shows they haven't researched the subject well and you are justified in being scornful of their shallow grasp of the subject. But if someone is talking informally and saying something like "robots should be required to have safeguards like the Three Laws" I have no problem with that, even if they phrase it less carefully and say something like "the Three Laws should be mandatory."
Also, when Asimov first wrote these stories, he overlooked two things that I consider hugely important. First of all, griefers. In his stories, any human could give an order to a robot and the robot would obey as long as no human was harmed. So a griefer could order an expensive robot to go smash a bunch of parked cars, ruining the cars and the robot, and (Asimov used this in his stories) the griefer could tell the robot "if you reveal my identity, I will come to harm" and it would be impossible for the robot to name the griefer. (It would also be possible to order "smash all these cars, and then forget ever having seen or talked to me.") The other thing is that Asimov imagined that it would be extremely difficult to make robot brains that did not include the Three Laws, which seems quaintly naive to me. If there is still a North Korea when robot brains are invented, there will be a secret project to make robots capable of serving as loyal soldiers, which means robots that obey Dear Leader's orders without question (no other safeguards included). As Jerry Pournelle used to say: "What man has done, man may aspire to do."[1] The existence of robot brains will be proof that a new robot brain design is possible.
P.S. Another classic of the robot genre is "With Folded Hands" [wikipedia.org]. Robots have the prime directive: to serve, and obey, and guard men[1] from harm. The robots ultimately enslave all of humanity in a smothering protective embrace: anything a human might want to do, like rock climbing, could be forbidden as too risky. Any human who resists this benevolent enslavement is lobotomized so that he/she will stop resisting and just enjoy life. I think in later stories the robots supervised even sex, on the theory that you could have a heart attack or something from the exertion, so the robots only allowed sex by young people, and only so there would be another generation of humans to serve.
Finally, for a modern take on artificial intelligence with inadequate safeguards, read the Torchship trilogy by Karl Gallagher. In these books, about a dozen whole planets (including Earth) have no living humans anymore because AI-controlled machines killed them all. In the stories, the historical events where the AIs went berserk are referred to as "The Betrayal".
The first book in the To
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Not if you eliminate all other alien races that could compete with humans. Maybe you should read the book.
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Wouldn't not allowing humans to take risk result in harm to the humans?
this exact argument is precisely the logic which destroys countless numbers of robots through the phenomenon known as "irreversible positronic brain-lock". it's a fundamental (and very sad) part of the stories that such highly intelligent beings are basically enslaved to the whims of humans, going from thinking, intelligent beings with a potential lifespan of tens of thousands of years, reduced to a smoking lifeless set of parts within seconds.
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It just felt really weird.
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I didn't really think twice about it.
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I guess the question is: live long or live well?
Also explored by Asm'imov in his robots trilogy.
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BBC Radio Series (Score:1)
Been done, surprisingly well, and almost completely unlike ST:D: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Here's my review:
This is a remarkably faithful adaptation of the Foundation Trilogy, all things considered. I was taken aback by the upper-class English accents of most of the characters, which I suppose was unfair of me. This is, after all, the far future, and Dr Asimov's Brooklyn accent was less prominent in his writing than in his speech. Still, Salvor Hardin doesn't quite fit; and Dinsdale Landen, since
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I think it'd have to be done as a fairly long series. The first book alone could be a season...it's not a simple story, and to capture the nuance would require a great deal of work.
I'd like to see it, though, if only to see how the creators visually represent the Asimov universe.
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They can make a movie on just the first part of the Foundation series. If that works out well, make another movie on the second part, etc.
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Many top sci-fi writers have done scripts and found it daunting to constrict the sprawling saga to a feature film format. I finished reading the trilogy a week or so ago. There is no feasible way to take what was five hundred or so years of conflict and intrigue, and all the attendant characters, and make it into a two-hour movie. Nor even a three-hour movie. Whatever would come out would be a shell of the story, the characters lifeless, and the plot unable to be followed by the majority of viewers. A tv show is the only way to approach Asimov's story since it allows for longer development of plot lines and encompass the time involved.
But it could be good as a TV series with a continuing arc.
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Hence their decision to make a TV Series. You know, the kind that could have 100 episodes :)
Re: I dont get it (Score:2)
I've heard this lie before. (Score:2)
I've heard this lie before!
On Slashdot, back in 2014. I'm beginning to suspect there will never be a Foundation movie/series.
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/14/11/11/1811227/hbo-developing-asimovs-foundation-series-as-tv-show [slashdot.org]
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It's going to be a disaster (Score:1)
Everyone even remotely familiar with the Foundation trilogy knows that it's almost impossible to transpose to tv/film.
They're going to focus on sex and extreme violence (Westworld, anyone ?), like almost every series being produced these days on HBO or Netflix, and either butcher or completely disregard the core ideas and concepts of the novels.
Call me a pessimist, but I've seen to many great classic science-fiction novels turned to shit on screen in recent years not to be.
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Everyone even remotely familiar with the Foundation trilogy knows that it's almost impossible to transpose to tv/film.
They're going to focus on sex and extreme violence
Wait, what? Apple is going to focus on sex and extreme violence?
I came here fully expecting somebody to claim Apple would ruin Foundation by censoring it beyond recognition, but this?
the psycho-historian doesn't 'read the future' (Score:5, Informative)
he develops the mathematics to predict the future based on large-scale statistical analysis.
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I was a bit annoyed by that description as well
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I was annoyed by the comparison to Game of Thrones.
On audio, the Foundation series is 23 CDs.
On audio, the Game of Thrones series is 162 CDs.
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From memory Lord of the Rings is 54CD's and that is not including either the Hobbit or the Silmarillion.
Game of Thrones needs an editor to cut out hour and hours of irrelevant crap from and reduce it to something sensible in length.
Re:the psycho-historian doesn't 'read the future' (Score:4, Interesting)
he develops the mathematics to predict the future based on large-scale statistical analysis.
that's not quite correct: the pioneer of psychohistory is R Giskard:
http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/R... [wikia.com]
Asimov's stories are *really* complicated and absolutely amazing, whilst at the same time being drier than frozen CO2 and consequently at times an awesome pain in the ass to read.
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he develops the mathematics to predict the future based on large-scale statistical analysis.
Not merely to predict the future. But to give back-stage manipulators answerable to no one the power to shape the future to his ends. The problem remains, as always, "Who guards the guards?"
Foundation Series on TV? Gah. (Score:2)
Ambien is Foundation Series in a bottle. How does one express effects of a sleeping pill on the TV? An artistic challenge right there.
And its TV, which means they have to sex it up somehow. How do you do that with Foundation Series?
Its going to be nothing like the books, or its going to be unwatchable. Probably both.
Sci-Fi Resurgence? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems quite a few classic sci-fi novels are being picked up for streaming/TV series adaptations recently. Foundation, Consider Phlebas, Ringworld, The Three-Body Problem, Altered Carbon, The Expanse. And then there's Star Trek: Discovery and The Orville. Television sci-fi was dead just a few years ago, I wonder what happened all of the sudden? One could say 'Game of Thrones' led to a general resurgence of geek lit, but there's a suspicious dearth of recent fantasy novel adaptations; Shannara and Wheel of Time are the only ones I'm aware of. Maybe Black Mirror or rising interest in SpaceX are responsible.
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I suspect there is something to having good analytics about what people - as in the vast majority of people living beyond pop-culture's limited horizon - actually watch. Nielsen ratings are as antiquated as NTSC, and everyone knew it but nobody had different datasets to compare. With Netflix et al, now they do.
And there is precedent for this in movies - which bank on books almost by default. Outside of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Pixar, every big franchise started with a book. And its been that way ever sinc
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The popularity of comic book adaptations helped. People were turned off by silly spandex costumes and magical powers, but then Marvel made a bunch of good movies and Netflix made a bunch of good TV shows.
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One of the most interesting Fantasy novels I ever read (I don't read much fantasy, as I prefer SF) is the 'Riddlemaster Triology' by Patricia A. McKillip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That would be a worthwhile movie project.
The latest fantasy I saw was "American Gods", but it looks like it got canceled after season one.
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On the other hand, some good special effects can make a good story much more striking.
Original Content (Score:3)
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Foundation Has Not Aged Well (Score:3, Insightful)
I read Foundation and its sequels as a teen, and I remember thinking it was pretty cool. More recently, when I saw that people were writing additional Foundation-based novels, I went back to reread the originals. What a disappointment that was.
The writing is really bad; Assimov had some good ideas, but should have let a writer put them into story form. The concept of psychohistory and predicting future events seems quaint now, given what we have learned about chaos theory (or sensitive dependence on initial conditions), quantum mechanics, and more.
I couldn't get through the first one without a deep sigh for my lost youth; then I returned them all to the library.
Whoever decided to adapt this for TV will have to rewrite so much of it that they might as well just forget using Foundation as source material and come up with their own plot, characters and narrative.
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Um, if you think psychohistory seems quaint because of quantum mechanics, you don't know how to read:
(1) The book itself says psychohistory is meant to work only with large numbers (the way quantum mechanics makes very precise predictions with large ensembles of quantum mechanical systems).
(2) Asimov is a chemist by training. If there is one piece of modern science he understood, it's got to be quantum mechanics, or he would have been a pretty crappy chemist.
Maybe some people put Asimov on a pedestal that h
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Just turn on the news (Score:3)
Depict the personalities clearly (Score:3)
The book has cardboard characters, but the movie doesn't have to. The movie should vividly show the different personalities.
Hari Seldon - while his health was failing, warned of Trantor's fall, manipulated Trantor's government into setting up the First Foundation, and secretly set up the Second Foundation.
The Committee of Public Safety - who foolishly thought that Seldon's warnings were treasonous.
Salvor Hardin - the first Foundation Mayor, whose style of governing is "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right!".
The conniving Prince Regent Wienis, who underestimated Hardin.
King Lepold I - Wienis' selfish and weak nephew.
Those are just a few characters in the beginning, when the book's characters were the most "cardboard". With good acting and direction, the movie can show their ways of thinking and acting, and also show their reactions to what happened.
In the TV show "Columbo", it was fun to watch Columbo solve the crime, and to watch the bad guys gradually realize that they would be arrested. In the Foundation movie, it would be fun to watch events follow Seldon's plan (until the Mule came along), and to watch the expressions of bad guys when they gradually realize that their plans will fail.
Hmmm... (Score:1)
I do wish'em luck, to be sure.
Ferret
Foundation may just be... (Score:3)
...too cerebral for T.V., I doubt it will fly.
I look forward to this (Score:2)
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Even though I'm getting pretty old, it will be interesting to see how they handle a story that takes place so much in the mind.
Child's play. No really. The age old instrument is to tell the story through the eyes of an innocent. In this manner you can narrate the cerebral stage. The trick is to talk to the audience like a toddler, but make them think they are being reasoned with by an idiot.
Foundation was one of my very favorite scifi stories growing up. Come to think of it, they will probably have to update the tone for our gender-equal times. Actually, they will make the lead characters women,and the story multicultural and alien friendly. I predict a Political Correctness lecture will result and so an abject failure.
I got nuttin. Except a suspicion you nailed it.
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One of the points of the series is that the Galaxy is pretty much one more or less uniform human culture. Significant numbers of aliens would destroy the plot. As far as the sex of the characters goes, Asimov wrote in the world he saw around him (much like the smoking), not meaning any sort of prediction. Changing some of them to female would remove nothing from the story. Science fiction of the period frequently reflected the current society but wasn't often embedded in it.
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I am completely not remembering arranged matings in the Foundation series. They've occurred in other stories, like Dune. I don't even remember "a higher level of abilities" taking place in the trilogy.
It would be more difficult to change sexes in Dune, although I don't remember any particular reason Mentats were male.
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If you think "the instinct to defend and protect" is male, you've never threatened a baby in the presence of the mother. Women can be fiercely protective, and they can extend that to large groups. The will-to-kill isn't what it's cracked up to be: see David Grossman's "On Killing". Men typically want to use guns for posturing, not killing.
Hari Seldon didn't use a gun. Seldon used scientific advances in an attempt to protect civilization, which is a reasonable thing for a woman to do. The Mule was a
Foundation informed Star Wars? (Score:2)
Foundation never informed Star Wars, more likely Buck Rodgers and Saturday morning cinema kiddie serials informed Star Wars. Lets hope they don't ruin it like the Will Smith I, Robot [youtube.com] movie. The Expanse [wikipedia.org] and Dark Matter [wikipedia.org] could be said to owe a lot to the works of Asimov and other writers of the period.
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The I, Robot movie was a clear case of the Three Laws going wrong, and therefore in line with the stories in the book. It did remind me a lot of Williamson's Humanoids, though.
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Has it occurred to you that Trump may be The Mule?
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Why is that?
Been here for a long time, tho not as long as others, why did this happen to a place that was one a bastion of GNAA? It's all so sad....
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